The present invention relates generally to recycling. More particularly the present invention relates to a system and method of substantially closed looped recycling pharmaceutical containers and caps that are part of a pharmaceutical system.
The pharmaceutical prescription industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that is facilitated by multiple industries. Obviously, the specific pharmaceutical manufacturing companies supply the pharmaceuticals to various distribution points or centers, including pharmacies, mail order companies, internet companies, and the like. The pharmaceuticals are then packaged in pharmaceutical containers for supply or delivery to the ultimate consumer, the patient. As the industry has grown over the years, there are literally millions of pharmaceutical container systems, including generally the container and cap used to seal the container, that are supplied on a monthly basis.
This supply in light of the continuously dwindling natural resources, as well as the desire to recycle, reuse and reduce the use of those natural resources, has led to recycling of the pharmaceutical container systems. This recycling is in its infancy due to recycling issues associated with pharmaceutical containers and various regulatory hurdles that deal with patient information and the remnant elements of the pharmaceuticals within those containers.
Heretofore, the recycling of pharmaceutical containers has been rudimentary, at best, relying on the conventional recycling processes wherein general plastic containers, as opposed to specifically pharmaceutical containers, are collected by an individual or at a location after use. Those general plastic containers are then returned to a processing facility as a collection of various grades, and sometime various families, of plastic. Under this conventional collection process, the plastic is typically collected, maintained, and returned in a comingled form wherein various types and grades of plastics are comingled within the same return shipment.
This comingled recycling can further complicate the potential contamination issues and reduce the future use of certain preformed plastic grades. This is because, at the recycling facility, various grades of plastic containers within the same plastic family are typically combined and recycled without true regard to the various end products that will be produced from that plastic or the end users of that recycled plastic material. More typically, however, various recycling facilities will only take a single grade or one of a couple grades of plastic material within a given family. These grades or material are then recycled and processed into a varying array of consumer goods without consideration of the various aspects or characteristics of the original plastic that is recycled.
Within each plastic resin family, there are various grades and types of resins that comprise that family. Various types of those resins are used for varying applications. For example, some types can be used for film applications, some for extrusion molding, some for thermal forming and still others for injection molding. Each type of resin within a family will have different performance characteristics and physical properties that affect how that resin reacts and performs. As an addition to these characteristics and physical properties, there can be various additives, clarifiers, nucleators, and other grade and application specific formulas that are added into a resin to facilitate that resin's use for a particular application within a particular grade and for a particular resin family.
The common resin families include high density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Typically, a current recycling system lumps various grades of a family of plastic resin together for recycling purposes. As such, conventionally within a particular family, the same grade of plastic is recycled together regardless of its additional additives and other items that were specifically added to various subsets of that grade for the specific formulas. Thus, this creates a problem when trying to use recycled plastics for specific applications.
For example, recycled HDPE plastic from milk jugs, shampoo bottles, or detergent containers, while they may be in the same class and resin family, are not generally viable materials used to make HDPE bottles for packaging pharmaceuticals. The HDPE resin as modified to form the milk jugs, shampoo bottles, or detergent containers has different characteristics and additives, or usually lacks the same of additives, as the type and grade of HDPE used for pharmaceutical containers. As such, the “common household” HDPE recycling containers cannot be processed and controlled properly during the recycling process such that the resulting flake of pellets can be directly used to make pharmaceutical containers. Further, the process used to make pharmaceutical containers is different from the extrusion, thermal forming, injecting, or film applications and production methods for other common household plastic products within the HDPE family and classification. This is also true for materials in the PP and PET resin families.
Additionally, pharmaceutical containers require specific grades of plastic and specific additives to those grades of plastic in order to pass Federal Drug Administrative (FDA) approval. Without these additives and additions, the pharmaceutical containers are not certified for use as pharmaceutical containers. As such, the pharmaceutical container industry typically requires additional processing of the containers not normally required for a standard drink bottle or similar grade plastic item. These additional characteristics are not conventionally considered to be recycling. As such, the typical recycling facility does not lend itself to the recycling of pharmaceutical containers due to their additional complication and requirements for manufacturing and production into a consumer usable product.
As such, specifically in the recycling process of pharmaceutical systems including containers and caps, there is a shortcoming that leads to inadequate processing of the used pharmaceutical container systems into new pharmaceutical container systems adequate for consumer use.
What is needed then is a system and method of recycling pharmaceutical container systems to increase the likelihood of recycling of those containers and caps and ease the actual recycling of the same into new unused pharmaceutical containers and caps. This needed system and method is lacking in the art.